Placing wind turbines off the East Coast could meet the entire demand for electricity from Florida to Maine, according to engineering experts at Stanford University.

It would require 144,000 offshore turbines standing 270 feet tall  not one of which exists since proposals have stalled due to controversy and costs. But the analysis shows it's doable and where the best locations are, says study co-author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering.

The team is not advocating for an "all wind" approach, saying it'd be foolish to put all of one's energy eggs in a single basket, but they do think it could reach up to 50 percent. Today the U.S. gets about 4 percent of its electricity from wind, but only via turbines on land.

We have plenty of gas here. My heat is gas and it’s friggin expensive. NYS should be able to cut my cost in half with fracking....but thast will never happen. The big “cut” will go into the NYS coffers...another way to rob the workers.

Michigan blowhads are admitting that its pretty much impossible but want it in the constitution anyway.

Proposal 3 would require that the state add as many as 13 times more wind turbines in Michigan than currently operate. Proposal 3 would mandate that 25 percent of Michigans energy come from renewable sources. Wind is expected to be the primary supplier of renewable energy if the proposal passes.

Advocates and experts predict 2,300 to 3,790 nearly 500-feet high wind turbines would have to be added to meet the 25-percent mandate. Michigan currently has 292 wind turbines in operation.

The bogus photo that purports to show the view of a wind farm from Nantucket Island, does not show the turbines in motion. When these things move, they are incredibly distracting. We are hard-wired to notice motion & these turbines will be mesmerizing. They will destroy views. The Kennedys got this right.

I'm all for alternative energy. My shack up in the mountain was too far from commercial 'lektrikity to have commercial power. I had wind, solar, and a backup diesel genset. Lots and lots of batteries.... Maintenance... sweeping snow from solar panels...

Sure, it can be done. If one doesn't mind living like a mountain man.

Nothing like washing your hair on the front porch in -18F weather, and feeling better about being in the 38F shack, because there isn't any wind.

I have a relative in the energy services business, and he always points out to me how critical it is to balance power supply and power demand on the grid - if demand exceeds supply by too great a margin, the grid goes down, hard.

And the problem with wind is that it doesn’t always blow, so typically when utilities install wind farms, they also build gas fired turbine units as back ups for when the wind dies out. The more you rely on wind, the more back-ups you need (a few years back, the grid in Texas almost went down as the air got still, and the utilities desperately looked for back-up).

So if these bozos are going to try to put up hundreds of thousands of wind turbines (and in whose backyard, I might ask - certainly not any Kennedy’s), they’re going to need a boatload of gas turbine power plants to keep that grid operable.

I am reminded of an old Bloom County comic, in which the little genius boy had figured out “an original idea”, a way to put 100 porcupines on treadmills and feed them raisins, as a way to theoretically generate enough electricity to power the entire world.

However, as his science teacher pointed out, “Porcupines are allergic to raisins,” then cuttingly added that, “failure is hardly original. Sit down.”

Let’s see, 144,000 wind turbines at a conservative estimate of 2.5 million each would be $360 billion dollars. You can buy a lot of Nuclear power plants for that much money. And they don’t stop producing power when the wind is too low or too high.

The main goal of Jacobsons research is to understand better severe atmospheric problems, such as air pollution and global warming, and develop and analyze large-scale clean-renewable energy solutions to them.

Jacobson states that if the United States wants to reduce global warming, air pollution and energy instability, it should invest only in the best energy options, and that nuclear power is not one of them. Jacobson’s analyses show that “nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction, uranium refining and transport are considered”.

His work also shows that “carbon capture and sequestration technology can reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants but will increase air pollutants and will extend all the other deleterious effects of coal mining, transport and processing, because more coal must be burned to power the capture and storage steps”.

Jacobson has studied how wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 per cent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels. He advocates a “smart mix” of renewable energy sources to reliably meet electricity demand:

Of course the cost of getting the power from the turbines to the grid means your monthly electrical bills, plus everything else you buy, will have to go up about 250% but HEY at least it will help “solve” the completely fictious problem of “man made global warming”

41
posted on 09/15/2012 5:28:04 PM PDT
by MNJohnnie
(Giving more money to DC to fix the Debt is like giving free drugs to addicts think it will cure them)

The lifespan of an offshore turbine is not going to be very long. Plus, keeping that many constantly maintained would be a logistics nightmare.

My thoughts too - it might create 500,000 jobs for folks to maintain the equipment, quadruple the cost of electricity, make supply less reliable, and a bunch of other "benefits" that the Dims always ignore because the cause is so "pure".

45
posted on 09/16/2012 3:27:12 AM PDT
by trebb
("If a man will not work, he should not eat" From 2 Thes 3)

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.